DACA and DREAMERS Affecting Immigration by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus

Relocating from one country to another is not a right. Any country has inherent power to establish an immigration policy that squares with the interest and culture of its citizens. Without such power, no country can continue to exist.

Rally/Protest in response to the rescission of Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Image from Wikimedia Commons by Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the United States as far back as 1924, a duly enacted Immigration Act established a “national origins quota” system to deal with immigration into our country. If ten percent of the existing population were Italian, said the Act, then ten percent of the total number of immigrants seeking entry could be from Italy. So, too, would the number of Irish, German, Polish, etc. conform to the percentage of the population already legally resident in America.

This same system of determining who might be eligible for legal entry in the United States then became the basis of the Immigration Act of 1952 written by Senator McCarran (D-Nev.) and Representative Walter (D-Penna.). Passed overwhelmingly by Congress, the Act was immediately vetoed by President Truman. It went back to Congress where the veto was speedily overridden with great support from Democrats. It was replaced in 1966 by an immigration law crafted by Senator Ted Kenned that completely reversed the existing McCarran-Walter policy. Kennedy and other liberal Democrats had discovered that they could swell the rolls of future Democrat voters via immigration.

No longer would maintaining the culture of the nation be a prime consideration. Newer legal immigration policy, not tied to the existing national origins of the American people, have opened the gates to people who have little or no knowledge of America’s governmental system. Most don’t even want to know about it. Overwhelmingly, they ignorantly prefer the socialism championed by the Democratic Party – and also by renegade Republicans who should be known as neoconservatives.

After 1966 as a result of the Kennedy immigration measure, amnesty for illegal immigrants became policy. Several million were soon welcomed via amnesty when President Reagan signed a Democrat-favoring measure in the 1980s. Mr. Reagan insisted that his granting residency to several million who came here illegally wouldn’t be duplicated. But it has been more than duplicated by other Democrat/neoconservative legislation. More millions of illegals have been amnestied after the Reagan cave-in.

In 2012, even while acknowledging that he had no power to do so, President Obama created a program providing temporary amnesty for huge numbers of young people who had entered America illegally. Called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama action granted legal status to 800,000 young people. They were converted from illegal to legal for a period lasting two years (and were able to seek an extension after those two years). They also received assurance that they wouldn’t be hunted down for possible deportation, and they were declared eligible for a work permit. In addition, they were permitted to bring family members into our country in what has been termed “chain migration.”

In many ways, DACA replaces the so-called DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors). First introduced in the Senate in 2001, and reintroduced several times in subsequent years, it has never been approved by Congress. DACA has never won congressional approval either. But DACA gained legitimacy via Barack Obama’s totally unconstitutional executive order in June 2012. President Trump has countered with his own executive order rescinding DACA but his order keeps all of DACA in place for six months.

Liberals of both political parties, expecting that most DACA beneficiaries and DREAMERS will vote Democratic, are noisily cheering for keeping DACA alive and for passage of the DREAM Act. Columnist Michelle Malkin, a native-born American whose parents are legal immigrants from the Philippines, disagrees emphatically with demands from the many leftists cheering for congressional approval of what she terms “a self-perpetuating political marketing machine.”

Liberal clergymen and politicians are now crusading for DACA and the Dream Act to become official law. They insist doing so is the ”compassionate” route to follow. They forget that laws were broken by illegal entrants. If nothing is done to uphold law, more laws will be broken.

“There is no such thing as a deserving DREAMER,” says Malkin. She adds, “They broke our nation’s law to get here and should never be rewarded with a sure path to citizenship.” If that sensible attitude doesn’t prevail, we can expect more, not fewer, illegals entering America.

Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.